Neutrally buoyant flying toys have enjoyed considerably popularity. For example, as can be seen from http://www.americantoning.com/balloon/index7.html, a UFO-shaped toy has two small and independently controlled motors to so provide a blimp-like control. Similarly, a remote control shark is shown in http://www.raidentech.com/skaiexairshs.html where a small propeller assembly provides propulsion and direction of the flying toy. Likewise, as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,240,206, a blimp-like flying toy has multiple propellers to provide propulsion and directional control. While such mechanisms are conceptually simple, they are most suitable for toys that imitate a flying object that has already a propeller-based propulsion system (e.g., blimp, plane, etc.). However, where the flying toy is configured as a fish or other swimming animal, propeller-based propulsion is less than realistic and therefore often undesirable.
To overcome such disadvantages, a flying toy is shaped as a fish and has a reciprocating tail fin that provides forward motion to the toy as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,194,029. While such mechanism is significantly more realistic, several disadvantages remain. Among other things, directional control (lateral and up/down) is not possible using such fin mechanism. A significantly improved flying toy is known from Festo's air toys (e.g., flying penguin, flying ray, flying jelly fish, as can be seen from www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxPzodKQays, www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_citFkSNtk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPGgl5VH5go). Here multiple control elements contort substantially the entire body of a flying toy to so produce astoundingly realistic flight motion. However, such devices are hardly considered toys as the manufacture is extremely expensive and requires highly sophisticated personnel.
Thus, even though there are numerous devices and methods for neutrally buoyant flying toys known in the art, all or almost all of them suffer from various disadvantages. Consequently, there is still a need to provide improved neutrally buoyant flying toys.